Meet 4 startup founders who decided to pursue their dreams of billion dollar valuations in Kashmir

When you live in a politically volatile state like Jammu & Kashmir, the options for work are few: either you opt for a conventional low-paying but secure government job or you follow time-tested and traditional business models in tourism and handicrafts.

Any digression from these set norms is a social and economic taboo. However, a clutch of Kashmir’s third-generation conflict children — most of them first-generation entrepreneurs — has decided to break the shackles and pursue their dreams that go beyond the conventional, at least in the region. These aren’t your Silicon Valley-type startup artistes, dreaming up billion dollar valuations and a life in the fast lane; rather they’re just keen to make their ventures work, with their savvy and tenacity.

ET Magazine met four such startup founders — three of whom have returned to their roots either from overseas or other Indian cities — who’ve come out of their comfort zones to take a shot at entrepreneurship:

Make (up) in India

Tired of a rather humdrum job at global market intelligence firm International Data Corporation in Gurgaon, in 2011 Saba Shafi thought it was time to do something new.

Originally from Seelu village in Sopore, 57 km from Srinagar in north Kashmir, Shafi graduated from Zakir Husain College in Delhi and did an MBA from Jagan Institute of Management Studies, Rohini in Delhi, before setting off on a tour across Africa, Europe and southeast Asia. She ended the tour at London, at the home of her sister. That’s when she enrolled in four courses in makeup art at the London School of Make Up and the Illamasqua School of Makeup Art, amongst other institutes, to learn her childhood hobby.

After completing the professional courses, Shafi became popular through word of mouth at the marriage functions of her cousins and friends. People started contacting her on social media and finally in the summer of 2013 she started taking formal bookings. “Since then I never looked back,” says Shafi, who now operates out of Kashmir and Delhi.

In Kashmir, Shafi charges Rs 15,000 for each bridal makeup and twice that amount in Delhi. For destination weddings, she charges between Rs 50,000 and Rs 1 lakh. “In Delhi I also hold workshops and hire teams on a project basis. In Kashmir I may train girls in future,” says Shafi, whose success has encouraged many other women in the Valley to enter this field. “Every bride is a celebrity for me and I want to live in prayers and memories of people,” she says.

Full of Beans

An IT professional with an engineering degree from Dehradun Institute of Technology, Fahad Jeelani was working at Wipro in Bengaluru till 2011, when he decided to return to his hometown, Srinagar. “I wanted to create a new possibility here,” says Jeelani, who was not interested in joining his family business of traditional handicraft shops.

Instead, he acquired a contractor’s licence and did some construction projects for the government. However, this bored Jeelani soon; he then hit upon the idea of setting up mobile restaurant, called Meals on Wheels, which if successful could be transformed into a chain of restaurants later. “In Kashmir eating is the only recreation,” says Jeelani. Early this year, he redesigned his Tata 407 truck to accommodate a kitchen and parked it on the busy Residency Road in Lal Chowk. “On an average 100 customers visit us every day,” says Jeelani, whose family members weren’t too thrilled by his idea.

For his part, Jeelani is in no mood to throw in the towel, and is in fact getting a second truck retrofitted to cater to demand from the educational institutes of the Valley. Meanwhile, one of his customers has set up a food truck in another part of the city. Does he see it as competition? Not quite. “It is very satisfying to be an inspiration,” says Jeelani adding, “Nobody from outside will come to help us, we have to do things ourselves.”

Cut to Fit

Beenish Bhat was clearly not cut out for a bank job and after two years of sitting behind a desk she decided it was time to act on the idea that kept playing in her mind during that period. So in 2012 she started a premium boutique in Srinagar branded Panache, which gave the selftaught fashion designer the opportunity to test the commercial worth of her creativity.

After three years of toil, the business administration postgraduate from Kashmir University has managed to carve out a niche of discerning customers who are willing to fork out a premium for Bhat’s products. “I never believed that one needs to have hordes of customers to be a successful business enterprise,” says Bhat.

At Panache, a customised suite price ranges from anywhere between Rs 2,500 to Rs 25,000. “I ask my visitors to survey the market and then come to me for shopping,” says Bhat, whose mantra for success is a modern packaging of “honesty, quality and style”.

A mother of two, Bhat had the wholehearted support of her husband, who offered her space at his family-owned factory. And her father, also a businessman, contrary to tradition, allowed his daughter to explore the business initiative. Bhat participates in fashion exhibitions across India to gain experience and knowledge about the fast-changing industry and plans to launch her own fashion brand in a few years. “I want to bring the best to Kashmir,” says Bhat, whose designs are already popular in bridal circles of Kashmir.

And she has few regrets about leaving a secure bank job. “If a personal venture takes time to be a success or even fails, the satisfaction and experience from the effort cannot be compared to any socalled successful career.”

Ticket to Ride

When Suhail Rashid Shah, 29, a resident of Bijbehara town nearly 50 km from Srinagar in south Kashmir, was pursuing an MBA at the University of Surrey in the United Kingdom in 2008, he toured London several times in an open-roof bus. The experience not only opened his eyes to the city but to a business opportunity. By 2011, Shah had left his marketing and sales job at Debenhams in the UK and returned to the Valley to plan an openroof, hop-on, hop-off bus service, which would be the first of its kind in Kashmir.

After a brief stint with a computer import business, Shah worked on his dream project along with friend Arshid Mehraj Khan in 2013 and finally managed to get two 50-seater ‘Kashmir Hop On Hop Off’ buses on the roads of Srinagar in 2015. “I wanted to work in the tourism industry, where I can interact with people regularly,” says Shah, who had done his BCom from Kirori Mal College in the Capita

The two buses ply on the 16.5 km stretch of the picturesque Boulevard, Foreshore road on the banks of the Dal Lake and the foothills of the Zabarvan mountains in Srinagar, passing on the way a botanical garden and the famous Nishat Bagh. “Business is picking up and next year we expect footfalls of tourists as well as locals to increase,” says Shah, who claims that more than 2,500 tourists and locals have used the service in the last three months.

In winters, the buses will also ply on the route of the world famous skiing resort of Gulmarg and Pahalgam. “Despite the constraints created by the political situation, nobody can stop you from pursuing your dream,” says Shah, who clearly has no plans to miss the bus.